Wednesday, February 5, 2014

JEREMY DENK

EJ
Thomas Hall

February
4

A captivating mix of erudition and exploration.

Jeremy
Denk cuts a decidedly different figure onstage. He plays the piano
like a precocious 12-year old, bobbing and weaving and waving his
head as his hands bounce on the keys. At his recital in Akron on
Tuesday night, he prefaced each piece he played (except, oddly, the
last one) with what he called “spoken program notes” –
introductions that included background on the composer, the work, and
how he approaches it.

Which
turned out to be hugely helpful. Denk is the second major keyboard
talent to appear in northeast Ohio in the past two weeks, and like
the first, Gabriela Montero (see review below), he has his own highly
personal language and style. Prodigiously talented, Denk can play
textbook versions of complicated classics or run off in entirely new
directions with them – often both in a single piece. So it’s
good to have a road map, offering some sense of where he’s going
and why.

What
distinguishes Denk from many of his contemporaries is his knowledge
of and respect for the music. Interpretations can be an ego exercise,
an artist using a work to show off his skills or bend the music to
his tastes. From both his introductions and the focused intensity of
his playing, it’s clear that Denk has thought a lot about the music
he performs, what the composer had in mind and achieved, and how he
can honor and bring that to life. If Denk doesn’t play exactly
what’s on the page it’s because he’s aiming for a higher truth,
one that embodies the spirit and intent of the music without
necessarily nailing all the details.

That
was clear in the opening work, Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 15 in F
major (KV 533/494). Denk’s animated approach and mischievous
tone captured the exuberant quality of Mozart’s music, even in the
darker, complex harmonics that appear late in the piece. In keeping
with his opening observation that the three movements are so
different, they might have been written by three different composers,
Denk created epic pictures on a broad canvas. If some notes went
missing or got clipped along the way, that did not detract from the
overall impact.

Schumann’s
Davidsbündlertänze
(Dances of the League of David) took Denk’s performance from
intriguing to amazing. After setting up the piece as the composer’s
giddy gift to his fiancèe Clara,
he gave a masterful rendition of it, capturing the freewheeling sense
of movement while reveling in the vivid array of colors, tones and moods
that run through the 18 movements. A work of considerable complexity,
it sounded completely fluid and fresh in Denk’s hands. And his
control was astonishing. Again and again he would run the music to a
precipitous outer edge, only to pull it back into straightforward
virtuoso territory.

Denk
opened the second half with three of Ligeti’s late-career Ètudes.
The pianist’s style seems too lyrical for modern music, but he has
a firm grasp of these works, which he has described as “bite-sized
bits of infinity.” The dexterous work on technically confounding
passages, broken chords floating like delicate aural wisps, and
precision sounds – the final notes of L’escalier
du diable had the
crystalline quality of falling icicles – made for a smart, coolly
impassioned reading.

Schumann’s
Carnaval
provided a riveting close, with even the simplest melodies carrying
great portent and every note rich with feeling. Fittingly for a work
describing a sequence of scenes and characters, it had a strong inner
pulse that seemed to pull Denk along, rather than vice versa. It’s
a remarkable achievement when the music takes on a life of its own.
In this case Denk deserves credit not only for his understanding and
mastery of the piece, but his willingness to disappear inside it and
ride the rapids with his listeners.

A
brief nod to Bach’s Goldberg Variations was enough of an
encore for an audience anxious to get out ahead of a gathering
snowstorm. And the warm, lingering sounds of the “Three Graces”
Steinway offered a final reminder of what a gifted player can create
with a peerless instrument: Magic.

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QUICK TAKES

Mr. Culture is off to Europe to cover the Prague Spring Festival and promote his new book, Festival Europe.

The book is a hybrid travel and music guide, an overview of the summer music circuit in 14 European countries, with detailed listings for 60 of the best festivals.

Beethoven in Bonn, Bach in Leipzig, Mozart in Salzburg, Dvořák in Prague – it’s all here, along with links to English-language tourist sites.

If you’re thinking of visiting Europe this year, this is the way to go, hearing the world’s greatest music as you’ve never heard it before.

For more on the book, click on the image above.

See you at the castle. Or Roman amphitheater. Or high in the Alps, where the eagles soar to Schubert.

THE AUTHOR

Frank Kuznik is a longtime journalist and culture writer covering Northeast Ohio's vibrant arts and entertainment scene. Born and raised in Cleveland, Frank has worked extensively throughout the U.S. and Europe, most recently in Prague as the Editor-in-chief and Culture Editor of The Prague Post. For a taste of the Prague music scene, see pragueculture.blogspot.com.